Hi. I am evaluating FarCry. My question is about how to organise the setup.
My main development uses CF as a server for JSON files for apps rather than HTML. I now need a web site for the most recent app and am looking at FarCry as the CMS to deliver that content. I use CF10 on both my local host and my shared hosting with an ISP. I have a few domains delegated to various webroots on that shared hosting and want FarCry to be available in just one of them to serve HTML content to just that one domain.
I just had a bad experience with another CMS which wasted hours of time so I am asking these questions before I go ahead!
On my localhost can I install farcry into a subfolder? eg C:\ColdFusion10\cfusion\wwwroot\Sites\mysite or does it need to be in C:\ColdFusion10\cfusion\wwwroot ? I just tried it by setting a /farcry mapping to get the installer running but it then copied files to C:\ColdFusion10\cfusion\wwwroot anyway and runs from http://127.0.0.1:8500/ rather than C:\ColdFusion10\cfusion\wwwroot\Sites\mysite. Admin wont run either, it keeps trying to run from the webroot. Maybe I also need to create some kind of alias under IIS?
On my shared hosting for a domain like www.mysite.com.au which points to /httpdocs do I just upload the unzipped /farcry folder to /httpdocs giving /httpdocs/farcry ? Do I need to set any mappings or is it all “local” to that folder? (I am guessing it does not need mappings but I am just checking!)
Thanks for your forebearance on these basic questions. I did try this forum first but couldnt locate the answers.
The easiest, recommended installation is to have a single FarCry app per-site / per-domain, i.e. www.mysite.com.au with the FarCry app running from the webroot (drop the “farcry” folder into the webroot, install, and away you go, no mappings required).
To try to assist with your questions;
In the FarCry Core 7.x installer we dropped support for doing a sub-folder install, i.e. www.mysite.com.au/site. It’s still possible to manually configure a FarCry app to work this way as the framework support was left in place, but we don’t recommend it because the intention is to remove this functionality in FarCry Core 8.x (this will give us both configuration and performance benefits).
If we were in the scenario of having a domain running many types of applications, such as;
www.mysite.com.au Home page is run from one application
www.mysite.com.au/site is a FarCry application
www.mysite.com.au/somethingelse is another application from another framework
… then we would probably run each of these as separate services and use a reverse proxy (e.g. varnish, nginx) to proxy the requests to each different application. It’s beneficial to be able to run each search in isolation, so that if you have problems, or if you need to do a deployment, or system updates, you aren’t affecting the other separate services. This would be our “ideal” way of solving that problem.
Similarly, if we had a scenario where we had an existing application that was an API, such as;
www.mysite.com.au Which is an API endpoint and has no “website” front end
… then we would most likely want to move the API onto api.mysite.com.au, and create a FarCry app at www.mysite.com.au which is used as the web site for the API.
If the FarCry app will be accessible at www.mysite.com.au (not a sub-directory) and your webroot is a folder called “/httpdocs” then yes you upload the unzipped “farcry” folder inside it, giving you “/httpdocs/farcry”, no mappings required.
Thank you Justin for your detailed reply. I really appreciate it. I will get going and look forward to an experience that is a FarCry from the last one!
Best wishes from the (slightly cooler than Sydney) Blue Mountains.
Murray
BTW: a little off topic, but it took me quite a while to work out what functionality FarCry offers. eg are there responsive themes, does it have a blog component? etc. It was the You Tube videos from the Linn Benton College that gave enough tangible examples for me to realise it was exactly what I was looking for! Just FYI.
We have a couple of sample projects which show how to implement layouts either using adaptive layouts (Fandango – desktop and mobile dedicated webskins) or responsive layouts (Chelsea, responsive using Bootstrap). Chelsea might be your best bet as it will give you features like carousels, customisable header / background images, etc. Fandango is a little simpler and just has a carousel.
We don’t have a large amount of “off-the-shelf themes” like other frameworks, simply because we don’t work that way ourselves. When we build something for a client, 99% of the time it’s entirely custom designed to meet their needs. The real power of FarCry Core is that the framework lets us build powerful, custom, content management features quickly. It’s geared towards doing a bit of code to set things up, rather than say the WordPress style “shopping cart” approach of choosing a theme, choosing some plugins, and then hoping things kind of mash together without too much hassle.
I don’t think the learning curve is too steep, but if you need any help just drop us a line any time
Thanks Justin. Yep, looking at Chelsea. It wasn’t the themes I was after, just some real world examples of the kinds of things I could do with FarCry. As I have learned, just saying a product is a “framework” or a “CMS” doesn’t really tell me much about how much I will need to code and how much I can leverage what is provided. All good. Looking forward to hooking in.
